Binny Bansal to set up VC fund

He quit as the group CEO of Flipkart in November last year, but still retains over 3% equity in the company he co-founded with Sachin Bansal.

Sep 9, 2019 by The Passage Team

Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal is gearing up to launch a venture capital (VC) fund, two sources familiar with the development told Times of India.

The launch is slated for the end of the year. Bansal will run the fund, with a target corpus of USD 300-400 million, in his capacity as a general partner (GP) and one of the anchor investors. The main focus of fund would be startups in need of growth capital in India.

“Bansal is likely to invest 10-20% of the fund’s corpus and will start bringing on board other investors soon,” said one of the sources.
The name of the fund has not been disclosed yet.

Bansal sold part of his stake to US retail giant Walmart for USD 200-250 million. He quit as the group CEO of Flipkart in November last year, but still retains over 3% equity.

Bansal has hired former Flipkart executive Rajneesh Baweja to handle finance and legal functions at the Singapore-based fund.

The other founder of Flipkart, Sachin Bansal, is using his exit money to start financial services company BACQ. He has also poured USD 100 million in ride-hailing major Ola.

Binny Bansal has also been making personal investments in startups for the last five years. He has invested USD 25 million in new-age insurance startup Acko and also participated in a USD 140-million financing round for warehouse robotics startup GreyOrange.

In July, Bansal also led final tranche in venture debt fund of Alteria Capital.

The Passage Team

The Passage is committed to creating in-depth content over technology industry across Asia with a focus on emerging startups in the technology, healthcare, education, food, tech, travel & mobility segments.